As we continue our Profiles in Leadership series, highlighting a few of the many leaders making a difference and impacting our communities, we are pleased to feature Portia Cameron, An Achievable Dream Class of 2003 alumna and Director of Student Affairs at Legends Charter School in Maryland.
In your current role as director of student affairs at Legends Charter School, how do you create equitable educational practices for your students?
Legends Charter School offers a rigorous curriculum that equips its students with the skills and confidence to overcome achievement and generational gaps. I joined Legends Charter School because of its vision. Every scholar achieves maximum academic potential while developing financial literacy through an engaging, inspiring, and challenging learning environment. As director of student affairs, my role is to create and cultivate these learning environments by providing equitable access and resources to all of our scholars. I target each scholar’s unique needs to meet equal academic performance expectations through an Academic Support program. The student affairs team also identifies institutional or organizational policies that may unintentionally create inequity by giving scholars voices through different school-based clubs and organizations like the “Legends’ Times” and student government.
As an AAD Class of 2003 alumna, what does it mean to you to live out some of the same values and educational opportunities in your community? How has AAD influenced you as a leader?
My favorite AAD banner is, “Nothing was ever achieved without enthusiasm!” As an educator, I am reminded of scholars’ tenacity and grit to achieve their goals every day. I am also aware of the importance of creating student-centered learning environments by hiring teachers with similar ethnic backgrounds to enhance equitable representation, providing scholars with financial literacy resources, facilitating lesson plans based on a social and emotional learning curriculum, and allowing scholars to advocate for their education. My motto is, “If you have the will, we can develop the skill.” It is pertinent to build a culture and community within the school where scholars feel their goals are attainable, and the faculty and staff’s needs are met, making them available and equipped to meet each student’s needs. In education, we often get lost in making sure scholars can pass state assessments and forget about building inclusive communities focused on student needs. Setting scholars on the right trajectory is an integral part of my role at Legends Charter School. AAD does this exceptionally well: simply asking scholars what they want to do with their lives and making sure scholars have access and opportunities to achieve their goals. I am often asked how AAD has influenced me as a leader, and my answer will always be that AAD had a student focus.
What are some of the opportunities you and your team have seen and embraced during the pandemic? What perspective have you developed in such challenging times?
When Atasha James, CEO, and co-Founder of Equity Now Inc. Legends Charter School, envisioned opening Legends, she never thought our scholars’ first day of school would have to be in a virtual setting. As schools across the globe rushed to move their “school” to Google Classroom and Microsoft Teams, my team and I focused on our scholars’ social-emotional learning and developing a curriculum rooted in love. During the first few weeks, we taught our students about Zones of Regulations, managing emotions, and adapting to online learning through our morning meeting program. As our students progressed through the pandemic, they could articulate their feelings and form strong relationships with their peers.
What are some of the ways your students have shown resilience in their nontraditional learning environments?
I was in awe of how flexibly our families moved from in-person learning to virtual learning during entirely virtual learning. I am still amazed at how our scholars show up and work on improving every day. Legends Charter School fosters a culture where students and teachers are encouraged to learn through mistakes. We focus on addressing scholars’ misconceptions and creating multiple learning pathways during team collaborative planning meetings. We all learn from mistakes, and they prove that you are trying.
What are you most looking forward to in the year ahead?
I am mainly looking forward to growth and expansion in the year ahead. I look forward to Legends’ scholars continuing to grow in their academics. In my personal life, I look forward to continuing to grow as a mother, wife, and director of student affairs; and I look forward to our communities continuing to grow together so Dreamers can achieve!